I get deluged with emails and calls asking me for a short phone conversation. Here’s what one stated today:
Hi there –
Just read your post. More details below.
Hope to hear back from you soon.
Thanks,
I was actually mildly interested in what this guy was offering, but then decided to ignore the email. As I reflected on the note, he hadn’t taken the time to address the note to me personally. Clearly, he’s targeting bloggers, mentioning interests in my posts, but not referring to anything specific in the posts. Later, he followed the email up with a slightly snide note asking why I wouldn’t invest my time in a call with him.
This individual was seeking my time, as it turns out, in the body of the text, he was asking for at least an hour of my time. Yet he hadn’t taken the time to research and personalize an email to me. I suppose he thought his time is much more valuable than mine.
Perhaps it is, but, I’m still the person he wants time from and he hasn’t created enough value for me to commit my time.
Bad Sales Prospecting
As I reflected on the note, this was just another of hundreds of bad prospecting messages I get. Sales people focused on high volume and velocity, deluge prospects with meaningless emails.
These clueless outreaches are bad enough, but they are seeking to rob me of my valuable time.
Isn’t it ironic, too often, we seek prospects and customers to invest their time in us, yet we haven’t invested the time to earn their time.
- We send out untargeted, meaningless, unpersonalized emails.
- We haven’t done our research on a person’s company or on them prior to picking up the phone.
- We haven’t prepared for the call or meeting, failing to think of, “What value will we create for the customer in this interaction?”
Everyone is time poor. Each one of us chooses to invest our time to maximize the return we get out of each minute. How can we expect prospects and customers to choose to invest their time in us, if we haven’t invested the time and work on our side.
I won’t invest time in you and your blind outreach. If you want my time, you have to determine what might be relevant and of value to me and communicate that. If you don’t, then stop wasting your time on me.
David Brock is president of Partners in EXCELLENCE, a management consulting firm focused on sales productivity, channel development, strategic alliances and more. Read more blogs from Brock here.
